Anti-fracking group visits West Chester

By
Jeremy Gerrard, Daily Local News

Thursday, June 6, 2013

WEST CHESTER – Anti-fracking protesters gathered in the borough Wednesday afternoon to stage a call-in blitz to state Sen. Andy Dinniman, asking him to support legislation that would put a statewide moratorium on the gas extraction practice.

Members of Food and Water Watch set up at the corner of Gay and High streets in the borough where they talked to passing pedestrians and asked them to call the senator, urging him to support the legislation.

Food and Water Watch volunteer Tom Ferry said he is hoping senators like Dinniman, D-19th of West Whiteland, will see the support and join in on sponsoring the bill.

“He said if he sees more pushback from his constituents he will do it,” said Ferry, who spoke to residents in West Chester on Wednesday.

“We just need to spread awareness of the environmental issues at hand and this is where we start to make a change, it’s with the constituents and people,” said Devon Dowd, an intern with Food and Water Watch.

The organization says it works to ensure the food and water consumed is safe, accessible and sustainably produced.

“So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping the global commons — our shared resources — under public control,” the organization says on its web site.

Dowd, who is studying environmental engineering at Lehigh University, said Wednesday she is one of a number of interns who were stationed in the area.

Ferry said the response has been good, with about six out of 10 people supporting them.

“It’s hard to convince people when it’s not in your district,” said Terry, who also works a booth at the West Chester Farmers Market each Saturday.

The effort in West Chester was part of a statewide call-in day Wednesday coordinated by a coalition of national, state and grass-roots groups supporting anti-fracking legislation.

This call-in day followed the April push to stop drilling where groups converged on Harrisburg to deliver petitions.

According to a poll conducted by the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy at the University of Michigan in conjunction with the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, 59 percent polled view fracking as a major risk to water resources and a majority would support a moratorium. However, 49 percent of responders approve of gas extraction.

Legislation calling for a moratorium on shale gas drilling is sponsored primarily by state Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Allegheny.

In April, Ferlo said he was proud to be the sponsor of the bill that would stop fracking so its environmental effects can be studied.

“We have been forced to stand by and watch while our water, air, and land have been ravaged by oil and gas development, and we must take a step back to deliberately and thoughtfully direct our path into the future,” Ferlo remarked in a prepared statement.

Ferlo asked colleagues in the senate for co-sponsorship to establish a temporary moratorium on drilling. The bill would prohibit the Department of Environmental Protection from issuing new permits and prevent drilling at sites where permits were granted, but has yet to begin, according to Ferlo.